Simultanagnosia is a disorder of visual attention resulting from bilateral
parieto-occipital lesions. Healthy individuals look at eyes to infer people's
attentional states, but simultanagnosics allocate abnormally few fixations to
eyes in scenes. It is unclear why simultanagnosics fail to fixate eyes, but
it might reflect that they are 1) unable to locate and fixate them, or, 2) do
not prioritize attentional states. We compared eye movements of
simultanagnosic GB to healthy subjects viewing scenes normally or through a
restricted window of vision. They described scenes and explicitly inferred
attentional states of people in scenes. GB and subjects viewing scenes
through a restricted window made few fixations on eyes when describing
scenes, yet increased fixations on eyes when inferring attention. Thus GB
understands that eyes are important for inferring attentional states and can
exert top-down control to seek out and processes the gaze of others when
attentional states are of interest.